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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Chapter Six Journal

Focus Question

1)How can teachers benefit from using information
management technologies such as bookmarking, social bookmarking, information
alerts, and e-newsletters?

a.Teachers can benefit from using these services
because it makes sure that they have everything needed and then some. By having
all of their online information stored that can easily pull it up to teach
their lessons. Or if they find something at home, they don’t have to remember
the address for later use. In fact if they use social bookmarking, their
students could, if given the link, look up their teacher’s public shown links
and get study help or essay writing help, and then in return add their own
helpful links to the pool of information just causing it to grow (pg 134-135).

Summary

In this
chapter we are talking about the many way teachers can manage their information
online, online learning, the different types of educational websites that are
out there for students and teacher alike, and finally how the educational
websites interact and engage the students. Teachers can organize their online
information through bookmarking, which is saving an address to your computer.
However, this method is being taken over cloud computing because it can be
accessed anywhere on any type of device as long as it has the cloud, or the
information needed to get to it (pg 134). Then there is social bookmarking,
which is multiple people adding to a pool of information on a subject (pg 135).
This is one that I think would be best use for teachers and students. It isn’t
just a teacher giving the students link. Both parties can put in links, and see
what others in the world thought were important. This teaches the children
about networking.

The book
mentioned other, but I don’t find them as important as these two. After talking
about the multiple ways of on how to keep track of the online resources
teachers can use, the books talks about how to organize them. One that is
talked about is a tag cloud which shows the words, or tags, that are most used.
The ones that are most often used are bolded and towards the front while the
less used ones are not bolded and towards the end of the list (pg 139). I think
this a great way to organize links because if someone is looking for links
talking about Robert Frost, they would look for a tag that has that name on it,
and up will pop all the links that the person has tagged Robert Frost in.

The book
then talks about WebQuests, which is pretty much a fancy name for an online class
or element to a class. A teach sets up the lesson and the students proceed to
do the work set up for them (pg 139). Honestly, I don’t quite understand why
this is such a big deal. It is all sense an online class. The way the book
makes it sound it is some huge difference from schooling. Instead of a teacher
giving the student the paper work, they give the students websites. It is the
same concept, just portrayed in a different way. If I were to give my students papers on Robert
Frost, they would still have to look up information on him. With the WebQuests,
I am giving them the links on Robert Frost. The end result will still be a
paper written about Robert Frost, with information gather from the internet. This
is not something that I would use in my classroom, unless told I had to do so.

Next the
book mentions Virtual field trips. This is when students go on a computer and
get to view some historical event “in person”, for lack of better phrasing (pg
140). This is something I see as being useful for younger students. However, I
could use this form of teaching if I asked the students to write about
something they see, such as the cathedrals or art museum that the book mentions
(pg 141). Following this the book talks about videoconferencing, which is when
a student and teacher video call each other (pg 141). This is something that I
see as being very helpful if a student is homebound, or if it I am teaching an
all online class. For a student to get behind in high school could be a tragic
event. If I can get the information to that student, and teach them what they missed,
it will end up helping me in the long run. I don’t have to hold back the rest
of my class to help out one or two who missed an important part of a lesson.
Also with the amount of students who are on teams and clubs that travel, this
could be a great tool to make sure they understand the lesson while they are
away from the classroom.

Finally
to end the chapter, for my purposes anyway, the book talks about online learning
and virtual schools. Before I state what the book says on the debate going on
with this who ideal, I hate the idea of virtual school. For students that are
homebound, this is a great substitute. But, for those who can go and decided
not to, I think they are cheating themselves out of an education. One of the
only reasons I am taking an online course is because they don’t offer EME 2040
or AML 2020 on campus. There are some things that just can’t be read, they have
to be taught. The book states on page 143, “… virtual schools employ fewer
teachers at generally lower salaries and offer fewer employment benefits to
employees, factors which contribute to an improved profit margin…”. This is
after page 142 states that between 2000 and 2011, virtual school have seen a
3.5 million increase! This is insane to think about.

Tech Tools 6.2 Page
137

For this
tech tool it talks about the website Delicious. We are currently using this,
and I have found it very helpful. While I know that it is something that is
going to be shown I haven’t been using the site to the fullest of its capabilities.
Because of this I just downloaded the app for the site. Knowing myself I know
that I will use it more if it at my fingertips. This is a much saver way of
saving my links than just not closing a tab until I do what I need to do with
it. I think I may also use this site for my other course and create separate tags
for each course. Included I a link to my Delicious account.

1 comment:

Thanks for sharing your views - that is exactly what these reflective journals are meant to be (and not a summary of the chapter, since I'm aware of the text content!). You make some interesting points about the online classes and I think ideally there would be a balance between the use of online technologies and face-to-face interaction. But ultimately, the online classes can be beyond simply replicating what happens in a face-to-face class and learning really can happen without the f2f connection...though I do think the element of conversation and group work helps to increase the potential for learning, when done well.